Erosion
by SomewhereApart
Summary: True Love can break any curse—but can it survive the breaking? An addendum to Parks and Wreck, for OQ Happy Ending Week, Day 5 (Friday)


This place is not designed for Happy Endings, and she has always known that. She had made it so.

She had hoped, once, dangerously, that she might be able to slip free of the curse's clutches. That as the architect she might be immune from it's wrath—it's what she'd told herself when she woke up on a chilly New Year's Day under the warm cocoon of covers with Rob Locksley curled against her back.

She'd convinced herself that they'd be safe from all this, even though she knew, deep down, that they'd been undoing it bit by bit since that first kiss.

The problem is simply that she likes him so much.

No. She doesn't like him. She _loves_ him, and that was her mistake.

True Love is strong enough to break any curse, even her own, and as the months moved on and on, she'd turned a blind eye to the danger in front of her. The Blue Knight had been joined in the sky by the Queen's Scepter, and the Celestial Galleon, and she had caught him once standing on his porch, at that cabin tucked back in the woods, staring up at towering oak and poplar. He'd been frowning, deeply, and as Henry had chased Landon around the side of the house, she'd asked Rob what had him so lost in thought.

"These trees are all wrong," he'd muttered. "There should be a grove of Witches' Pine here; it's always grown outside my home."

Witches' Pine doesn't grow in Storybrooke, or anywhere in this realm. It does grow rampant all through Sherwood Forest, and the Dark Woods of the Enchanted Forest.

The words had made her stomach go sour, just like every other little remembrance he's had. But he'd turned his head and seen her, and then blinked, and then smiled. And forgotten.

Just like the Blue Knight and the Queen's Scepter, the Witches' Pine had notched away inside his head and found a home there among the curse's many lies.

She'd thought perhaps it would go on that way forever, little bits of the-life-that-was spilling over into the-life-that-is in drips and trickles. A tree here, a constellation there, but nothing so much that it would move the sun or sink the moon.

She'd forgotten that a drip here, a drop there, again and again is all that it takes to carve canyons into mountains. To bore holes through the rock solid foundation of her curse.

Six months go by and he stares longer at trees, at people, at _her_. He looks sometimes like he's trying to work out the answer to a particularly vexing problem, and she loves him, so she ignores it. She tells herself it's nothing, that she's imagining it, that she's paranoid—until one night he wakes in a cold sweat, panting, the force of his nightmare rousing her from otherwise pleasant dreams.

When she reaches to soothe him, he recoils, barks, "Don't touch me, you wicked woman!" and for a moment he looks at her like he doesn't know her.

Or worse, like he does.

She's stunned, rooted; tears well in her eyes even though she knows she should be strong, she should _not_ cry. She had to know that someday this would happen, that it was inevitable.

This land was not built for Happy Endings—not even, it seems, her own.

And then just like that, he crumples, reaching for her with apologies on his lips, drawing her close and whispering into her hair that he didn't mean it, not one bit. He tells her that she's lovely, and that he adores her, that she's precious to him. Swears he'd been caught between sleep and waking, a nightmare fresh in his mind. He begs forgiveness, and she gives it.

It tastes like ash on her tongue.

He is not the one who needs forgiveness.

 **.::.**

She doesn't sleep. Lies awake until the dawn touches the windowsill and creeps across the floor, and then she slips from the bed and makes coffee, thick and dark the way he likes it. She grimaces with every sip as she curls her knees to her chest on the old swing on his front porch and stares at where Witches' Pine should (never) grow.

She has a choice to make. Love him or leave him. Either way, she's destined to lose him.

He finds her there, sitting on the porch, the dregs of her coffee gone cold. Her bones feel cold, too.

She knows what she needs to do. Even as he sits beside her, the bench creaking under the shift in weight, she prepares herself for his impending distance.

She loves him. He will hate her.

The way she always knew he would.

"Did you get any sleep at all after I woke you?" he wonders, guilt heavy on his tongue.

She frowns and asks, "What was the dream?"

Rob looks away and mutters, "Doesn't matter now. The mind plays tricks; it wasn't real."

She swallows heavily, heart beating hard in her throat and asks, "What if it was?"

Rob squints at her for a moment, then shakes his head, dismisses, "No. Don't be silly, love. That woman I dreamt of, she wore your face, but she wasn't you. She was… evil. You're not that." His shoulder bumps hers, teasing, playful; it hurts to smile back. "Bold and audacious, perhaps. A bit stubborn, and I wouldn't want to come between you and your morning coffee. But you're no Evil Queen. I know you."

Her eyes squeeze shut; those fault lines he'd put in her heart months ago start to spread and tremble. She will break open and shatter into shards at his rejection, but she cannot go another day lying to him.

Secrets always bear harsher punishments than confessions.

"You do," she gasps, forcing her eyes open, forcing them to meet his own confused blues. "You're the only one in all these years who ever has. It's why I love you… Robin Hood."

It hits him like a bolt; she can see the recognition dawn on him. His hand releases hers like a trap springing open (so why does it feel like she's ensnared herself?). He shifts, moves away one inch, maybe two. His head turns toward those missing pines, then back at her.

"What have you done?"

 **.::.**

She thought he would be murderous.

He is not.

Strong men can be gentle, and he's gentle even in this. She can see the betrayal, can watch it percolate and rise as he realizes the woman whose bed he's been sharing is the very same evil monster who'd haunted his dreams. His land.

"I cast a curse," she whispers. "I made this place; I changed everything. But you… you've been waking up."

"Why?" he asks, harshly.

She doesn't know if he means why she cast the curse or why he's broken free, but the answer to the second question comes more easily, so that's the one she chooses to answer. She tells him what she'd told Snow White all those years ago (who knew the innocence of Regina's youth could destroy her so many times over?): "True Love is magic. It's strong enough to break any curse. And I do love you, Rob. I really, truly do. This land may be woven from magic, but what we have _is real_. I meant every word of it. Every kiss. Every touch."

She cries as she says it. He looks at her like she's grown a second head. Or like she's a murderous despot who shed the blood of scores of his countrymen in a quest for vengeance.

For a long while, there's only the birdsong of early morning and the hammering of her terrified heart, and then he tells her, "I think you should go."

 **.::.**

It's three days before she sees him again.

Three days where she jumps at every knock on her door. Three days of expecting an angry mob brandishing pitchforks to stalk up her drive. Three days where her heart feels hollowed-out and empty, and three days where Henry asks why his playdate with Landon has been put off again, and again.

She didn't expect his apparent mercy, but she's grateful for it. She doesn't deserve it.

When he comes to her, it's nearly midnight; she's already dressed for bed.

He stands on the porch and looks her up and down, that same seeking, searching look he'd given poplars and the stars. "I want to know who you are."

She thinks maybe he's forgotten yet again, maybe the curse has remixed his brain once more. So it's entirely masochistic to tell him, "You do."

"No." He's like steel over candy floss—so firm in his convictions but she can see the tender sweetness of him beneath. The candy-coated comfort of familiarity, of twenty-odd years of nostalgic affection. For the first time, she begins to hope he might be capable of loving her despite the horrors. "I want to know the parts you kept hidden. I want to know how you came to be her. I want the truth."

She has known of him, always. Since the beginning. He is her head of Parks, he is the thorn in her side, he is her soulmate.

She doesn't like him. She loves him, down to her marrow.

He knows her better than anyone living, but he doesn't really know her at all.

So she invites him in. She pours them each a whiskey. And she tells him her story.

He does not seek vengeance upon her many sins. He does not spit venom at her feet. He does not threaten to steal her son, or raze her town, or oust her from the Mayor's office.

He listens.

And then he makes her an offer: "Regina, would you like to start again?"

 **.::.**

They have no secrets and no lies. Happy Endings have no room for such things.

They still fight, they still bicker. He is still a thorn in her side at every Town Hall meeting, and he still protests vehemently when she proposes a soccer field take the place of that ever-contested plot of land.

He never tells a soul who she really is.

In the evenings, they sit on her deck and map the stars, and compare stories of gods and legends—the ones here and the ones there. One night, after sharing what she knows to be a very dubious retelling of the story of Sylar the Sphynx (he's stuck in the sky until his riddle is solved, not, as Robin tells it, because a nearby constellation has caught his tail and won't let go), he asks her, "Do you regret it? Casting the curse? All that you did?"

She ought to. Her story is a tragic one, worthy of constellations. She ought to be Regina the Mad Queen, a cluster of red fire burning in the sky, but she is not.

"No," she tells him. "It brought me my son. And it brought me you. I could never regret that."

Robin tilts his head against hers, points to the sky, and never asks again.


End file.
